“He’ll be tried as a juvenile.”
“And put in prison?”
“A juvenile facility.”
“But what harm did he do?” I asked, bewildered on behalf of my friend’s son. My crime involved death, which was the ultimate in harm. But here? “The high school records have been straightened out. And theSpa, what harm there? Okay, a crime is a crime, but how serious could this be? Devon isn’t the Pentagon.”
“He got into Twitter.”
“And did whatharm?” I had a Twitter account. I used it to promote my work at the Spa. I couldn’t imagine harm that a hacker could do that would justify imprisoning a fifteen-year-old boy.
“It’s Internet fraud,” Jimmy said. “That’s a Federal charge. The arraignment is Monday. We’ll have to wait ’til then to know about other charges. They could charge him with wire fraud, too.”
“Isn’t that the same as Internet fraud?”
“They’re different statutes. Add one to the other, and the penalty gets worse. They could also charge him separately for each post he made, so that could be a dozen counts, maybe two dozen counts.”
“Chrissake,Jimmy,” Kevin said.
“Okay, okay, let’s assume they leave it at Internet fraud. The government has to prove deliberate deception, which there was if he hacked into school accounts to change grades. They also have to prove he used someone else’s computer without permission.”
“The school will never press charges,” I said. I knew many local teachers through Alex, and each one had struck me as kind. I was sure they would prefer counseling or an internal school punishment rather than incarceration.
“Twitter’s the problem. The victim is Ben Zwick.”
Kevin and I exchanged blank looks. “Who is Ben Zwick?” we asked together.
“Benjamin Zwick,” Jimmy said with relish. He drew a sharp line between what was confidential police business and what was not, and while he might slip with small details once in a while, this wasn’t small. Given how brashly he said the name, I assumed that the identity of Benjamin Zwick was public knowledge to anyone who had watched tonight’s news, which neither Kevin nor I had done. “He’s an investigative journalist withThe Washington Post. He has credits a mile long. He’s always showing up on shows likeWashington WeekandMeet the Press. And he wrote a book.”
A silent bell rang. Maybe I recognized the name, after all. “On antisemitism in Scandinavia?”
“That’s it.”
“Oh God. He won a Pulitzer Prize.”
Kevin directed an unimpressed, “So?” at his partner.
“So our friend Chris,” Jimmy quickly corrected himself, “allegedlyChris, hacked into Zwick’s account and made posts Zwick claims hurt his career.”
“Like how?” I asked.
“Like saying there’s proof the last presidential election was rigged by the Republicans. Like saying the Secretary of Defense is supplying guns to whoever wants to organize a home militia. Like saying the Prime Minister of Norway is a second or third cousin to Hitler, and then calling his editor at thePostan asshole for refusing to let him print that in a story.”
“Those posts are over the top,” I said. “Anyone can see that.”
“Not anyone. The retweets were even worse, haters from every side coming out. It took Zwick a couple days to realize what had happened and close down his Twitter account, which is also pissing him off. He says his name is smeared and people don’t trust him like they used to and won’t answer his calls. He’s hitting back hard. He wants whoever did this to him to be publicly skewered.”
“A fifteen-year-old boy?” I cried.
“He says he didn’t know who it was at the time, but that if a kid did it, he should know there are consequences.”
Once, after the accident, when the only relief my mind could find was in books, I read something that stuck.A big part of growing up is learning to be cautious. It’s realizing that there are consequences to everything you do.Like the character in that book, Chris Emory was fifteen. Death might not be involved in the charges against him, but the potential consequences were still pretty heavy for someone that age to bear.
“Is Zwick the one who leaked Chris’s name?” I asked Jimmy.
“Nah. He’s too savvy for that. He made sure a colleague did it beforethe judge issued his gag order. He is one angry dude. He says he’s the victim and that this is about his reputation.”
“It’s about publicity,” Kevin put in. I was thinking the same thing, but given my reasons for disliking the press, it was more valid coming from him. “He’ll make the rounds of the morning shows and sell a lot of books.”
